Unbanned: How I Got My Facebook Ads Back (and What You Can Do)

0:00 It's true, I've been banned. Me and several small businesses are suffering the same insurmountable fate. The audacity of giant corporations. The inhumanity of, well, Facebook blocked me in advertising. And this is Just Messed Up. I'm the JumpCutKing and this is the Create Podcast. I started a business about a year and a half, maybe two years ago. And I started on my own full time and it's been going well. But there's been one thing that's just been eating me alive and that's Facebook. Long story short, I found out that I got banned from Facebook advertising in December, but

1:01 had gotten banned in March. And the reality is, well, let's just say it's been a tough couple of years trying to maneuver advertising and trying to figure out which platforms to use. Especially since platforms like LinkedIn are three times more expensive and platforms like Google Ads is kind of like throwing pennies and dollars at the midair and hoping some dove somewhere is going to land on your webpage and actually click on it. Well, okay. It takes a lot of what we call optimization for you to be able to optimize your experience and more importantly, be able to, you know, sell things, get prospects, get clients, that kind of thing.

2:04 In fact, it's something I know fairly well. Okay, it's changed since I've been banned, but here's how I got banned. And then later I'll tell you the secrets and how I got unbanned. To the best of my knowledge, I did absolutely nothing to make Facebook despise me. In fact, I'm almost to say that I feel like Facebook was targeting me. They weren't. And I'll make a long story short. I work for a nonprofit, which is also a religious organization, which is also a church and they're worldwide nonprofit.

3:09 just safer for my sanity because people after COVID got crazy. In any event, so I had to check that regularly. Well, I may have seen it. Maybe I didn't see it. I don't know. Never got an email. Never got a notification. Didn't get anything. And according to the new policy, all enacted from COVID, that I had 90 days to re-verify. Facebook revised their entire platform's terms of service to include this new verification method. Why, you might ask? I'll get to the why in just a little bit.

4:12 that. So I went to advertising. Build a campaign, build a single landing page, direct traffic to that campaign, and get traction. The goal of getting people to purchase these packages, purchase marketing, consulting, or purchase web development inside The Universe platform, and grow and expand that way. I spent a lot of time on this, weeks, months, probably if you were to do the calculation, thousands of dollars of my time. Because, you know, everyone has an hourly cost, even I do. Anyway, so I built this single page, curated it, designed it, integrated with Stripe, integrated payment processing, updated it, and integrated the platforms.

5:18 Okay. Somehow I found a page where it existed, clicked it, and it said, you got that. It said, your account is restricted. Clicked on, went over to the business profile, and found that it wasn't just my account. But apparently all of my pages associated with Facebook were all restricted from advertising because of something. And I didn't know what it was. If you don't have more than one admin on your business pages right now, billing admin, or administrative component, you could lose permanent access to advertising for you failing to follow the Facebook Terms of Service.

6:22 know, even though I'm not afraid of much, I do have that inert fear that someone somewhere is always trying to get one up on me. And so I thought in my mind, Facebook hated my platform, or maybe Facebook is just against small businesses, or whatever. That's not the case. Although, they do have a lot of small business accounts that have had this happen, and I strongly recommend someone from Facebook go and look into this. I'll let them know that, to Google, if you miss a verification, we know they'll suspend your account, but they won't terminate your access.

7:24 And so I thought, after I interviewed a bunch of clients, and, you know, let's do Facebook ads, let's do that. Well, I got banned from Facebook. I did this. I did that. And it became a very common problem in my line of work of seeing people who got banned from Facebook. I shouldn't be surprised, because Facebook, to be honest, is a little confusing. And their terms of service is a long read. I'm in multiple hours of reading. Yes, I try my best to read it and understand it, and without a legal professional, I don't know if I'm not that good at understanding it.

8:24 Facebook. In fact, every month they have, you know, all these new users adding accounts, creating pages, creating posts, and it's Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and an entire ecosystem designed to help people connect and to be interest-based media. Oh, yeah. Social media is no longer a thing. We're not interest-based media. We have social media add-ons that help boost your algorithm. So go ahead right now, like, comment, and share, and boost the algorithm, and let the algorithm know that you love my content. And if you don't, don't worry, I won't put you in the penalty box, like Facebook did me.

9:25 eventually thoughtfully analyze a situation and produce results that kind of sort of works, and you modify it, and you're good to go, versus spending months and years trying to develop a script to do something. So that's that. And millions of spam artists out there are finding new and creative ways to take your information, to take advantage of you, to get your social security number, to get your credit card information, to steal from you, and do all nefarious things. Especially because Facebook has a whole lot of data on you, so it's easy for someone to go in and social engineer a concept.

10:26 In fact, they don't sell the products that you want. And these nefarious actors create single landing pages that look great, feel great, great testimonies, and convince you. But if you're not paying attention to the small things like missing a comma, missing a punctuation mark, you'll enter your information, or worse, you'll be tricked to enter your information, login information, choosing phishing, and they'll get access to your bank accounts and all sorts of stuff. All because you clicked on an ad on Facebook.

11:27 them, or whatever you want to call it. And eventually gets you to complete a transaction on a nefarious website. They steal your information, and bonus, you get nothing that you have ordered for, and Facebook's reputation goes down. So Facebook had to make huge sweeping changes. Google did the same thing. Google chose to go about it a little bit differently. I kind of liked the way Google chose to go about it, but I'm not saying any of this is wrong. I'm just saying the experience was less than stellar for Facebook.

12:27 more ads in, and just cramming it in. So they had to go through complete automation. In fact, they had to go through complete automation on everything. They removed support numbers, like everyone else did during COVID, because people were just calling and trying to take advantage of the system. And frankly, you really shouldn't be doing that, but nefarious actors exists. In fact, my entire mythos on life is trust God, God will provide, but also protect and guard your heart, and protect and guard your things, and make wise decisions, and don't allow nefarious actors to knock on your door.

13:31 My account wasn't as active as someone else's, and I probably only spent like maybe less than a thousand dollars in total over the ads, so it didn't mean much, but for my business, it meant a whole lot. It's the ability to create, and the ability to make, you know, to do future stuff. And to be honest, not having access to Facebook and Instagram really put me in a tailspin, and not in a good place. And I found all this out during December.

14:32 And they had no idea what it was. And frankly, they did all sorts of weird things, like asking me to create a new account. Don't do that. Asking me to verify as a politician who can run campaign ads. That was weird. And then I had to get, like, notary public to sign things. And at the end of the day, after lots of Facebook going back and forth with their support staff, and I have screenshots and screenshots and screenshots and screenshots, and at the end of the day, I get a call from Facebook.

15:34 to hear what was going on in my account. And she was also very saddened to hear that it happened. And she said that I was the exception, not the rule. And unfortunately, she couldn't do anything. Now, as a database engineer and a programmer, I completely understand that you can do something. It's a SQL string. It's a SQL query, or it's a no JSON query, or it's easy to turn on and off a feature. Unless, of course, you have to do grand encryptions.

16:34 I tried to find lawyers. I tried to find anyone that will take this case. And I interview people. Nope, we're not. Facebook, nope, not taking it. Nope, not taking it. Nope, not taking it. And I'm going and schooling for Reddit and schooling for things. And then I find out that there's this new privacy board mandate from the federal government that requires Facebook to have procedures in place that they do for everyone unilaterally and can't be overwritten. And that's because apparently they lost the lawsuit or that was their terms of agreement or something.

17:38 Sorry. Any event, at the end of the day, finally, about three to four months ago, I read somewhere that it worked, contacting district attorneys. I had redone the Reddit post and nobody had responded and nobody was giving me advice. And so I decided, okay, I'm going to call or go to the district attorney's website. Go to the district attorney's website and I call them up and they tell me to file a complaint and I file a complaint. I had screenshots. Please take screenshots of everything.

18:39 I had to call them. And then finally, okay, they're like, yeah, we received a request, but we need this information for you. And I sent it to them, called them again and verified the information. Apparently my driver's license is now part of public record. Yay. About 60 days later, I went on their website to check in on the status because they give you a tracking receipt, which is great. I love those for four things. You'll be able to go in, copy your government report number or whatever it is, and be able to get a response.

19:42 was being reset, and I needed to reset my password. Remember, I don't have the Facebook app. I have the Instagram app, but not the Facebook app. And I also use Apple Cloud Private Relay. That sounds right. And so I tried to do this, tried to reset my password, and I'm getting furious. But I'm hearing the voice where it said, don't get furious. It's fixing it. I'm fixing it. I'm like, great. And I'm mad because I'm trying to fix Facebook. I'm trying to make food at the same time.

20:45 And then I got some weird notifications. My developer account, which got blocked as part of the advertisements accounts, all got restored. And I keep getting these notifications for my developer apps, which I no longer have, use. And I get, you know, hey, read the terms of service. We're updating this in February. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I'm like, what? Like, oh, I go in and my Facebook ads is restored. Now, Facebook didn't have an official response. I'm sure they probably sent something to the district attorney's office to let them know, hey, close this account.

21:50 the only step I had left. And I was very happy and excited to know that everything got fixed, even if it was still a frustrating process. I will say this cloud of I can't use Facebook anymore and Facebook sucks has finally been lifted from my soul. Like my new set, I literally just screwed in drywall everywhere. If you see drywall dust on the wall, you're welcome. I'm sorry. I'm still figuring out the creative lighting here. It's supposed to be teal. And I don't even think that's a teal.

22:52 And I mean that with all respect. If you try and fail, you'll learn from it. If you don't try, you have nothing to learn from and you'll never succeed. You kind of cut yourself at the knees and you limit your ability to grow when you get into fear. And fear is more than just being afraid of spiders, being afraid of lightning. Being afraid someone's going to shoot you. One of the toughest things to do in business is to get over your hurdle.

23:55 going to lose out. You can't be afraid of what you're doing. You can't be afraid of taking steps to protect yourself. You can't be afraid of taking steps to protect your business. You can't be afraid to take steps to grow your business. If you can't grow, you'll never succeed. But you can't grow if you don't try. I know we've been doing good on the production front. I know we've been doing good on all that. And, you know, maybe some people think some of the AI stuff I've been talking about, it's over their heads.

24:57 And when I lost that, I read that Reddit post that said, hey, I contacted the district attorney's office and filed a complaint and was able to get a response and they were able to work it out. That's all I had to do. But it took me a whole year and a half. The timeline was back in December of last year is when I got blocked or the year before that, sorry, is when I got blocked. And it took almost two years for me to get unblocked or when I found out I got blocked.

25:58 And even if you don't, like I said earlier, if you fail, great, learn from it. I can't tell you how many multi-billion dollar company and entrepreneurs out there, millions of entrepreneurs that have passed that, you know, 300, 400, 500 million dollar, you know, year range have had all these failed businesses and all these failed things because the, you know, trying and it didn't work, trying and it didn't work, trying and it didn't work. But they kept trying mostly because they had no choice, but they kept trying.

27:01 peace, to cover you with strength, that he goes before you, makes every crooked path straight and he gives you the ability to be bold and walk with courage and be strengthened. And in everything you do, I pray that the Lord be with you, that you take your step of faith. We'll see you again right here on The Create Podcast. Again, like, comment, and share and tell me how you like the pretend new set, I guess.